Homocon

So with oil prices reaching higher and higher levels, alternatives to the once undeniably attractive black ocean in the Middle East are looking better by the minute.

"High prices lead people to develop substitutes," says Steven Levitt at freakonomics.com, and a NYT cover story article, which is meant to spook consumers regarding a so-called "peak oil" crisis and an unparalleled worldwide economic depression, actually hits the High Cost Of Oil Benefit right on the noggin: "When crude costs $10 a barrel or even $30 a barrel, alternative fuels are prohibitively expensive . . . yet those tar sands and other alternatives, like bioethanol, hydrogen fuel cells and liquid fuel from natural gas or coal, become economically viable as the going rate for a barrel rises past, say, $40 or more."

Steven Levitt goes on to say, "People respond to incentives. If the price of a good goes up, people demand less of it . . . and everyone tries to figure out how to produce substitutes for it." George Will notes in his June, 2004 article America After Oil that " since 1988 the average gas mileage of U.S. passenger vehicles has declined, and . . . in the 2003 model year, for the first time since the mid-1970s, the average weight of a new car or light truck was more than two tons" -- the incentive for change was not yet in effect, and the explosion in SUV production throughout the 90's was directly in response to rock bottom fuel prices rather than any antagonistic attitude towards the environment on the part of consumers.

While environmentalists, conservationists and kooky leftists have been vainly pitching the energy debate in moral terms, what they've consistently failed to realize across the board is that the only argument that wins in a free market is the economic one. "You're cutting down the gorgeous rainforests, destroying our children's national birthright, crowding out the caribou and ruining my view!" has little to no chance of beating the straight-forward logic of the bank account.

Economist Russel Roberts has this to say: "Years before the last drop of oil is found and extracted, we'll walk away from oil as an energy source. It will be too hard to find new reserves. Or too expensive to extract the reserves we know about. Long before we run out of oil, we'll switch to cheaper alternatives."

In 2004, alternative energy sources provided only 6 percent of the entire nation's energy supply, yet with the increasing social, political and economic costs associated with drilling, extracting and refining our oil, alternative power sources are attracting attention at even the highest levels of government. In the last two decades alone, solar-thermal panels have become far more efficient, and energy analysts such as Paul Torcellini, a senior engineer at the DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, note that, with products that harness stable alternative energy sources as opposed to price-fluctuating oil, consumers can benefit by knowing their energy costs upfront instead of hedging their bets on uncertain markets and unknown reserves.

Energy sources such as offshore wind farms, solar panels, hydrogen fuel cells and ground-source heat pumps are all terrific ideas, but when oil is cheap and gas is plentiful, it's difficult to convince consumers that spending the extra 20 grand for fuel-cell technology in their automobile, or an extra 50 thousand and up for solar or geo-exchange systems in their homes makes any practical sense. But practicalities and alternative energies may have just found their eHarmony moment in oil prices that are nearing, and expected to exceed, $70 a barrel.

The human species has a maddening habit of responding to emergencies only when they are upon us ("Our best estimate as of today is there are between 500 to 1,000 large near-Earth objects at 1 kilometer (diameter or more)," said David Rabinowitz, a scientist with the JPL project headed by Eleanor Helin -- but we're nowhere near an escape plan), and it's the same with energy resources. I've always believed that the best way to push alternative energy sources is to make darn sure that what we're presently using is either way too expensive to continue exploiting or on the brink of running out. And while no one has any true idea of how much oil is left to pump and refine, we may have just reached the point where the financial costs are exceeding the return.

We can have our Brave New World full of alternative technologies, but, it seems, only if we're forced into it. So the next time you're tempted to complain about the high prices at the gas pump and the increases in airline fees, stop, take a deep breath, and think hydrogen fuel cells, shale oil and any number of presently undiscovered fuel resources. The development of alternative technologies due to increased energy expenses may very well be worth the price we're paying right now -- and it's certainly the only way we're going to seriously explore the options.

COMPLETELY OFF TOPIC:
I'm pretty bummed about this: "U.S. household electrical appliance retailers and stores selling movies have already voiced concerns that consumers might be reluctant to purchase the next-generation DVDs due to confusion over the differing formats."

I was hoping we could avoid a format battle, but it looks inevitable at this point.

COLOR ME UNSURPRISED:
Michael Moore enrolls at a Fat Farm . . . fer real!